Sunday, 5 July 2009

Canon LBP-5000 “out of paper” problem solved

Today the mentioned laser printer refused to print because of “out of paper” error. Naturally, the paper tray was full of paper. Printer reset, toner removal didn’t help. After examining the the underside of the printer (the part above the tray) I haven’t seen anything that was malfunctioning either. No mention of this problem on the web too. Then I realized that I could try to print the pages by using manual paper feed (seems obvious now;) and it worked. But still the notification light for missing paper was still on. But luckily, after few printer papers from the manual feed slot the notification went away and everything was fine.

One interesting thing about this printer and the other canon printer I have (cp520) is that they are some strange models canon doesn’t want to display any information. What I mean is that the latter printer I can’t even find on their web page (even in discontinued printers), and the former doesn’t even have 64bit drivers.

Canon selphy cp520: completely erased existence on canon web pages, those print kits (“cassettes” and paper packages) just went up in price by substantial amount

One could say that I could switch manufacturers but I bet they are even worse. The canon inkjet printer I had before this laser was expensive but was good actually. Died only couple of months ago (had it for around 6 years). The printer before was a HP deskjet 690c. That printer was ok for couple of months but then it mysteriously couldn’t pull the papers in so you had to supply it sheet by sheet. The scanner I bought for my dad 2 years ago was somewhat expensive hp one. I can only say to you this. It takes like 4 minutes to start scanning the first page and the drivers are around 400MB! Unbelievable I know. And they have one of the worst UIs I have ever seen. So I won’t buy any of that HP crap ever again and I advise you do the same.

The way I solved this problem was to go into the printer settings where I (somehow) found that a job I had tried to print earlier was still in a queue. I pause the job, then deleted it and straight away the paper light stopped flashing.